Tech and Work

Windows Update Reboot Timeout

Matt Little — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 09:22:00 GMT

I might have posted this before, but if you want to change the amount of time that windows give you between suggsting that you reboot following the recent windows update, you can do the following (care of Microsoft):

1. Click on Start and then click on Run.

2. Type in 'GPEDIT.MSC' without the quotes and click on OK.

3. Within the Group Policy Editor, navigate to 'Local Computer Policy / Computer Configuration / Administrative Templates / Windows Components / Windows Update'

4. On the right hand pane, double click on the policy named 'Re-prompt for restart with scheduled installations'.

5. If the automatic computer restart prompt needs to be completely disabled, select "Disabled" and click on OK.

6. If the default time interval needs to be changed from a value of 10 minutes to some other value, select "Enabled" and type in the desired time interval in minutes in the following box. Click on OK.

7. Restart the computer for the changes to take effect.

You can, if you wish, disable the reminder instead of changing the timeout.

Usual caveats apply - don't do this if you don't know what you are doing and remember that if you don't reboot, your machine is not properly protected.

SQL 2008 Release candidate 0

Matt Little — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 11:47:00 GMT

The first release candidate for SQL 2008 can be downloaded here.

Some of the nice new features you can use are [taken from this website]:

Backup compression (25-35% at least) - huge cost savings and hey it's native! (note SQL 2005 encryption is not supported by product support but
Transparent Encryption - transparently encrypt the data without the application needing to be aware or know about it.
Database Mirroring Enhancements - compressed logs, more automatic fail over options
Policy Based Administration - manage policies across databases and even across instances and servers
Cluster enhancements - easier to configure and more scenarios that it supports including many in WS08 that provide more intelligence for failover
Resource Governor - limit wild database resources or control one database resources from another!
Easier to deploy - Easier to install, easier to configure, on and on
Reporting Services in SharePoint Mode (report builder rocks!) - easy reporting solutions built to leverage SharePoint mode with more flexibility and with ease.
Data compression - smaller databases with the same amount of data (compression will vary, but watch the overhead on enterprise environments or heavy used environments)
Powershell integration - super extensible and super scriptable

More in-depth details can be found here.

Western Digital and eSATA

Matt Little — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 17:51:00 GMT

I got an external Hard Drive for backups last year and with the new computer, I could make use of its eSATA link (much faster than USB).

Only I couldn't. It just wasn't recognised by windows at all.

After much, much, much searching talking about altering BIOS settings and downloading firmware for the SATA controller, the answer was much more Heath Robinson.

It appears that the Western Digital drives need eSATA cables with a really long connector. As most companies put some plastic housing around the end of the cable, it tends not to go far enough into the WD drive. Answer? Get a knife and take some of the plastic off the end of the cable.

Thanks to this guy for having the answer and showing what to do.

Visual Studio 2008 includes Source Code

Matt Little — Thu, 04 Oct 2007 10:10:00 GMT

Visual Studio 2008 will ship with source code for the .NET framework.

It'll make like a lot easier than trying to use reflector to work out what is going on! Some more details here.

XSD.exe on the external tools menu

Matt Little — Thu, 09 Aug 2007 09:57:00 GMT

For the techies - this is really easy to do - adding XSD.exe to the 'External Tools' menu on Visual Studio.

Problem is remembering the speical magic of settings to get the directories correct. Here it is:

Command line is (visual studio 2005):

C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\SDK\v2.0\Bin\xsd.exe

Don't say that I'm not good to you ;-)

New machines and the memory question

Matt Little — Tue, 10 Jul 2007 13:05:00 GMT

I am thinking of putting together a new PC in the next few months. Great.

So it will probably be a vista machine with a fast dual/quad core processor and 4GB of memory.. Or will it?

Although vista "supports" 4GB of memory, 32-bit vista subtracts all devices from this imaginary limit. So if you have 4GB of address-able space and 2 x 756 MB graphics cards, windows 32-bit will only "see" 4GB-1.25GB = 2.75GB of memory.

The answer to this is to run 64-bit vista with a decent chip and motherboard. Get the wrong combination and it still won't work properly.

This isn't Microsoft's fault - it is a design decision that was taken to prevent badly written 3rd party applications from not working.

Makes you think about spending all that extra money on 4GB of memory though.......

Search Both

Matt Little — Thu, 14 Jun 2007 11:29:00 GMT

I use Google. I like Google.

Some people like Yahoo.

Want to search both? Together? http://www.searchboth.com/

I love the idea and the interface is great - hover over either Google or Yahoo and that pane takes over the majority of the screen to read more easily.

Great idea.

Orcas Beta 1

Matt Little — Fri, 04 May 2007 09:41:00 GMT

A great post about where to get all your Orcas Beta 1 stuff here.

I worked out that I have about 18 GB of stuff I want to download this weekend. Sorry, Mr ISP - you did say unlimited downloads!

Can you read Graphs? Or, why not to Chart in February....

Matt Little — Sun, 22 Apr 2007 14:35:00 GMT

Engage brain and hold on while we take a walk through what can only be described as a bug in Excel 2007.

The graph below is fairly simple and shows a 'dip' in some data - can you tell what month it is?

Did you say early February? Wrong. Obviously it is middle-January (the dip starts on 15 th January and lasts for a few days by February, it is back up to 'normal'. Surprised?

Well, here is a graph of the same data:

Quote clearly you can see that it is about the 15 th January - which is what the underlying data actually records. So how did that happen?

Have a look at the first graph again and check the months December, January, March, April. Well, where is February? The answer is that the graph's author wanted the graph to run from 30 December until 30 March with the axis marked every 1 month.

Microsoft Excel 2007 decides that, as February has only 28 days, it can't possibly display on the axis as it has been asked to start at the 30 th of the month. Don't believe me? The only change in the second graph was to set the start date of the graph to 28 th of December and, as before, mark the axis monthly. Note that the position of the data line does not move.

I could vaguely understand the following happened:

February is missed from the axis, but its 'space' is still there so that you don't misread the data line. Instead, the following occurs:

For some reason, February is missed and March moves to take it's place! Only problem is that the data line DOES NOT MOVE, so now you have the word March underneath February's data and April under March's data, etc, etc. We also have an extra entry (July in this example) even though the data doesn't run until July.

I could almost understand missing February when you tell it to mark the axis on the 30th of each month, but moving the axis without the data is silly.

Surely someone thought about how to handle months with less than 30 days? Maybe not!

Team Foundation Server Roadmap

Matt Little — Tue, 10 Apr 2007 17:44:00 GMT

A great article on where Microsoft Team Foundation Server is going. Get it here.